NASA's Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph has captured video of a coronal mass ejection (CME), the first such footage to be taken from the "Small Explorer Mission," designed to study the Sun's lower atmosphere.
Footage was captured on May 9, according to NASA.
The video shows a large sheet of solar material around "five Earths wide" and approximately "seven-and-a-half Earths tall" in the field view.
"The IRIS imagery focuses in on material of 30,000 kelvins at the base, or foot points, of the CME," said NASA. "The line moving across the middle of the movie is the entrance slit for IRIS's spectrograph, an instrument that can split light into its many wavelengths - a technique that ultimately allows scientists to measure temperature, velocity and density of the solar material behind the slit."
IRIS has to "commit" to pointing at specific spots on the Sun at least a day in advance, so there was a certain amount of luck involved in getting the unique shot.
NASA said the CME was not directed towards Earth. Instead, it was pointed toward Venus.
"We focus in on active regions to try to see a flare or a CME. And then we wait and hope that we'll catch something," said Bart De Pontieu, IRIS boffin at the Lockheed Martin Solar & Astrophysics Laboratory, according to the space agency. "This is the first clear CME for IRIS so the team is very excited."
IRIS deployed on a two-year mission back in June 2013.
In April, the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) was able to capture footage of a "graceful" flare, and a week earlier both IRIS and SDO captured what is currently the best observed X-class flare to date.
In the future, NASA wants to learn more about the reason why solar material is heated when rising from the surface of the sun to its atmosphere, which has become known as the "solar corona mystery."
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